In 1973 Lucy. R. Lippard wrote that art from 1966 to 1972 went through a highly transitory phase. That aesthetics in art were on their way out, dissipating into the void of art history as we know it, and that conceptual art was bounding in in it’s wake. A de-emphasis on material aspects: so sculptural, structural formations were out, and photography, text, performance and ideas were in. In this time period of six years, Lippard suggests that artists rejected the craft of art and the creation of objects themselves seeking instead something more fundamental. Ms. Lippard calls this "resonance". Though "conceptual art" has long since passed by, the analysis in this book is still current and applies more than ever in our "post-modernist" period.
I, as an artist who has found a recent reverence for process and materials in my own practice, could not ignore this huge theme in the art world: Craft Vs. Concept. I have always been an artist who thinks the two should coincide. I shun Duchamp, ignore Sol LeWitt. Art should be like a human face, it should express what is going on underneath on the surface. So this essay is about what I call, rematerialization. I want to focus on the aesthetic side using process art and arte povera as an example, looking at the materials that are applied and the means and consequences provided by nature’s elements, and I plan to reach for the pragmatic meanings and ideas underneath too. This is rematerialization: my appreciation of aesthetics, materials and process.
I have chosen to examine Process Art because it is highly relevant to my current practice, one that included artists such as Eva Hesse and Robert Morris. I also aim to dip into the Arte Povera movement, but Process Art is my main area of interest. So in short, this is how this essay will proceed:
1) Materials. The building blocks that make up the aesthetic.
2) The elements vs. these materials. What role does nature play?
3) Subject. The pragmatics behind the aesthetics.
“Process artists were involved in issues attendant to the body, random occurrences, improvisation, and the liberating qualities of nontraditional materials such as wax, felt, and latex. Using these, they created eccentric forms in erratic or irregular arrangements produced by actions such as cutting, hanging, and dropping, or organic processes such as growth, condensation, freezing, or decomposition.” (Guggenheim Museum, 2012: http://www.guggenheimcollection.org)
So far in my research I have noticed one word that has been used frequently to describe the nature of the materials used by the process artists; “Industrial”. A personification of this and a forefronter in Process Art would be Robert Morris. Morris used an array of materials in this category, from rubber, steel, plywood and industrial felts to unmanageable materials like dirt, thread and steam. Morris’ late 1960s felt works are particularly relevant, and portray a pivotal transmutation between minimalism and Process Art.
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Robert Morris. Untitled. 1967-8. |
Interestingly enough, it has been suggested that these materials may be echoes of scenes from his childhood, one being of him playing in heaps of fabric at a family friend’s house or a “malevolent black mound of coal” (R.Morris, 2008: “Interview: Robert Morris”, www.tate.org.uk) in the family garden. “Early childhood experiences have always been central to my art making.” (R.Morris, 2008: “Interview: Robert Morris”, www.tate.org.uk) This further supports my idea that aesthetics and concept can coexist. Even when the artist tries to block the concept out through pure creativity and the “art relating to nothing but art”(Lucy Lippard, 1973: 7) perspective, the artist’s subconscious leaks through. Even in the disguise a childhood memory. In fact, Morris was an ambassador for Process Art in the late 1960s, expressing the importance of serendipitous natural factors that can effect “Process”:
“Sometimes a direct manipulation of a given material without the use of any tool is made. In these cases considerations of gravity becomes as important as those of space. The focus on matter and gravity as means results in forms which were not projected in advance. Considerations of ordering are necessarily casual and imprecise and unemphasized. Random piling, loose stacking, hanging, give passing form to the material.” (Morris, Robert in Lippard, Lucy, pages.45-46)
What I have noticed about Process Art is that there is a massive element of serendipity, paint drips (ref. To “Splashing, 1968” by Richard Serra), tendrils fall down and hang, colours change over time. The name was given to this movement as there was more of a focus on the formation of a piece, as opposed to the end product, the objet d’art. Incidentally, this is all down to mother nature. The elemental side of these works are absolutely crucial. Whether it be something very organic like mould, or something more physics-focused like space or gravity, elemental constituency is ever present in Process Art.
This is what I love about process art, a piece is almost alive, it changes and develops over time. I have integrated this fascination of ephemerality into my own work, by covering my pieces in bread dough in order for them to mould, pickling decomposing food in jars and even creating my own crystals out of sugar.
Yes the process artists often left their work to the forces of nature, Hesse with her latex creations that moulded and collapsed over time, Penone with his tree-orientated sculptures, but this serendipity was planned, a paradox in itself.
Giuseppe Penone’s work is reknowned for having a deep connection to the natural world, a relationship between tree and the human figure. There was a massive regard to elemental constituency in Penone’s portfolio of sculptures, his Continuerà a crescere tranne che in quel punto ("It Will Continue to Grow Except at that Point") consisted of a steel cast of his hand in a tree trunk, causing the tree to poetically and bulbously grow around the hand. He often uses the shape and form of a tree to his advantage, carving tree trunks to imitate the human body in appearance. Man made versus the organic, another theme that pops up in my current practice.
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| Sugar Crystals made by myself |
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| My studio space. |
So the elements add some serendipity to a finished process piece, but does this serendipity necessarily mean there is no concept or idea to the work?
Eva Hesse considered gravity and space a major influence on her pieces, we can see this especially in “Untitled” (1970), my personal favourite Hesse, in which the rope tendrils loop, hang, drip and protrude, suggesting the bodily. I only recently found out that Eva made this piece when she was dying, I perceive a lot of death, sadness and rawness in this piece. Purely through its shape, and use of soft, visceral materials. It has been suggested that Eva Hesse was part of the minimalist movement, but I disagree, you look at this sculpture and you see too much of the artist in it. Lucy Lippard, incidentally a close friend of Hesse, described her work contradictorily as: “both strong and vulnerable, tentative and expansive” (L, Lippard. 1976: 6). So how can we say Hesse’s works don’t mean anything? Funnily enough, she often aimed for this:
"I wanted to get to nonart, nonconnotive, nonanthropomorphic, nongeometric, non, nothing, everything, but of another kind, vision, sort, from a total other reference point, is it possible?" (Eva Hesse in Grace Gleuck: 2006, www.nytimes.com)
Yet I do not see this, I think her art is too emotionally loaded, and you can see this through the aesthetic. This is why I chose to study Hesse for this essay, I see an aesthetic and a concept coexisting in her work. She often suggested that her life could subconsciously slip into her work as subject matter:
“My art and life have not been separated. They have been together.”(Eva Hesse in Lucy Lippard. 1976:5)
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Eva Hesse's "Untitled", 1970, in collection of the Whitney Museum |
Rosalind Krauss expresses my above sentiments in her article on Eva Hesse, describing her as:
‘formalist dialogue of the 1960s with the message of expressionism … ‘manifested through the experience of matter itself.’
All in all, this essay has showed to me that I do have the resources and research techniques to find artists that I appreciate and are relevant to my work. And that there are artists out there in the past and present that have concept and material coexisting in their work, I just have to use the thorough research methods I have gained through writing this essay, in order to find them. Rematerialization is feasible, the current art world is not dominated by minimalistic conceptualists, and we can see this in artists work today.
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| "Shooting into the Corner", Anish Kapoor, 2008-09 |
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"Keffieh," by Mona Hatoum, (1993-99), human hair on cotton, 1993-1999, collection Peter Norton, Santa Monica. A re-creation of the traditional headscarf or "Keffieh" worn by Arab men that interweaves strands of women's hair. |
